Mitt Romney Wants to Change His Image

Mormon Romney has the best chance of challenging Obama for the presidency — but his greatest hurdle is dissent within his own party.

“My God, that thing is heavy!” Mitt Romney groaned as he sank to his knees, apparently surprised at the weight of the thick file just handed to him by a bleached blonde physician named Betsy McCoy.* McCoy’s facial expression looked as though the file might have been a collection of al-Qaida pamphlets. In reality, it was the White House health care reform law passed two years earlier. Calling it a complete waste of paper, Romney quickly handed it to a nearby assistant as he scowled openly.

What a great sleight of hand maneuver! Before Barack Obama could even address the issue of mandatory health insurance, Romney had already passed such a law — albeit a miniature version of it — in the state of Massachusetts. This occurred when Romney was governor of the state, his office in liberal Boston, and he was relatively flexible and politically more centrist.

Unfortunately for Romney, most Republicans today share the same opinions as McCoy, a tea party movement adherent who curses Obama’s health care reforms as a fateful step toward socialism. And Romney wants to run for the White House as a Republican, leading a party that has shifted far to the right.

Saying that his plan took up only 20 pages, he noted that it was right for Massachusetts but wasn’t right for the whole country. He warned against becoming a nanny-state like Europe — obviously Obama’s dearest goal. Meanwhile, McCoy nodded as vigorously as if she were hearing those words for the first time, although they had long been part of the candidate’s standard repertoire in Hudson, N.H., as was Kid Rock’s defiant song “Born Free.”

Posters reading “Believe in America” were intended to recall the words of Ronald Reagan, now beatified as the nostalgic founding father of American conservatism. The average age of the people in the hall appeared to be around 60.

Romney, 64, probably has the best shot at unseating Obama by attracting the support of independent voters. The question, however, is whether he can survive his own party’s opposition. His Republican opponents depict him as a notorious flip-flopper. He had, at first, supported stronger environmental protection laws, but he now opposes them. A previous supporter of a woman’s right to choose, he now rejects that stance. While he opposes withdrawing troops from Afghanistan until they have completed the mission, he also insists that America shouldn’t be fighting other nations’ wars, a position that could clearly be interpreted as a call to withdraw.

Romney characterizes himself as a problem solver — not a Washington insider, but a businessman. He then talks about how spartan his boyhood was, especially his service as a Mormon missionary in France.

It’s all an attempt to change his image — the image of a spoiled brat who has no knowledge of the real world but who has seen only the sunniest side of life. Romney’s father, George, was CEO of American Motors and also served as governor of Michigan. Mitt Romney amassed a fortune as CEO of Bain Capital, an investment company that mainly took over other firms, split corporations up, allowing some of them to go bankrupt and making the survivors leaner and more efficient. He became rich doing this. Newt Gingrich, Romney’s most serious competitor, chided his dear party colleague, saying that he should pay back all the money he saved by the mass firing of his employees.

*Editor’s note: “Betsy McCoy” is likely a reference to Betsy McCaughey, chair of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a prominent critic of President Obama’s health care legislation.